Roma città aperta

Roma città aperta was Roberto Rossellini’s revelation, a harrowing drama about the Nazi occupation of Rome and the brave few who struggled against it. Though told with more melodramatic flair than the other films that would form this trilogy and starring some well-known actors—AldoFabrizi as a priest helping the partisan cause and Anna Magnani in her breakthrough role as the fiancée of a resistance member—Roma città aperta is a shockingly authentic experience, conceived and directed amid the ruin ofWorld War II, with immediacy in every frame. Marking a watershed moment in Italian cinema, this galvanic work garnered awards around the globe and left the beginnings of a new film movement in its wake.

‍

With a lecture about Neorealism and the Resistance, and aQ/A after the screening.